Dictionary · Quality & Accreditation
Proficiency testing
Evaluation of participant performance against pre-established criteria by means of interlaboratory comparisons — an ISO/IEC 17025 requirement for demonstrating ongoing competence.
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Validation
Verification where the specified requirements are shown to be adequate for an intended use — demonstrating a procedure is fit for its purpose.
VIM (JCGM 200:2012) 2.45
Interlaboratory comparison
Organization, performance, and evaluation of measurements on the same or similar items by two or more laboratories under predetermined conditions.
ISO/IEC 17043:2023
Decision rule
A documented rule describing how measurement uncertainty is accounted for when stating conformity with a specified requirement — required by ISO/IEC 17025:2017 when a laboratory reports pass/fail.
ISO/IEC 17025:2017, 3.7
Accreditation
Third-party attestation, by an authoritative body, of a conformity assessment body's competence to carry out specific tasks — for laboratories, against ISO/IEC 17025, by bodies operating under ISO/IEC 17011.
ISO/IEC 17011:2017
Process measurement assurance
A program of intermediate checks using check standards and control charts to demonstrate that a measurement process remains in statistical control between calibrations, as described in NIST SOP 30.
NIST SOP 30 (2019)
Check standard
A stable artifact or instrument measured regularly within a measurement assurance program; its control chart reveals drift, shifts, or loss of statistical control of the process.
NIST SOP 30 / GLP 1